The brief period has been scrutinised again and again, in movies, books, and TV documentaries and dramas, with top-end Brit actors often in the main role.

However, all past efforts are now blown away by Downfall (15, previewed at Dundee UGC), which, thanks to a slavish attention to accuracy and a towering performance as Hitler from Swiss-born, German film veteran Bruno Ganz, is destined to become the definitive screen account of the Nazis’ grim finale.

Largely based on the memoirs of one of Hitler's young secretaries, Traudl Junge (played here by Alexandra Maria Lara), the movie is notable on a number of counts. For a start, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, this is the first big-budget attempt by the German film industry to tackle the subject in over 50 years and it’s been masterfully put together, recalling the gripping authenticity and sheer watchability of that other German-made war classic, Das Boot (1981).

The bunker itself, in terms of architecture and fitments, is as per the real thing, and with a lot of the action taking place above ground, on the disintegrating streets of the city, special effects have been used with great skill to recreate the Hell that was Berlin during the Soviet siege.

In the bunker, all the usual suspects are present – Eva Braun, Bormann, Goebbels, Speer, Himmler, Goering – as well as a full cast of generals and flunkeys, who last the course for as long as their loyalty to their leader dictates. With shells soon raining down on the ground above (and, incidentally, shaking the cinema, thanks to some great use of sound), most of Hitler’s sycophantic courtiers eventually made a grab for their sprinting jackboots and fled Berlin before the end.

Outside the bunker, the lot of ordinary Berliners is shown in terrible detail — old men shot for not fighting the Ivans; young children thrown into the firing line; the wounded left in heaps; the uninjured left to wait, fear-stricken, for the unknown to come.

Of course, Downfall being made by the Germans themselves about their most infamous son, it hasn’t arrived without controversy. Ganz’s portrayal of Hitler has been said to humanise ‘the monster’ too much. What can you say? He WAS human — apparently indulgent with pets, affectionate to children and charming to women. When he wasn’t orchestrating genocide and wiping countries off the map. He was worshipped by millions, and especially so, by those few who were within his close orbit.

Ganz’s performance is, quite rightly, no caricature and fully allows the film to get as close to the truth and reality of these events as any dramatisation ever has.

Not that this is easy viewing. Be warned. It’s a harrowing and unsettling experience, providing evidence of the most shocking kind that, 60 years ago this very month, Berlin was experiencing a springtime like no other.

VERDICT: A milestone, and unmissable.

Five stars

Apart from the fact that, for the past 26 years, I’ve been unable to hear or read the name Jodie without thinking of Jodie The Demonic Pig, a particularly nasty component of the old movie. It was the way she stood, deep in the shadows at the entrance to the Amityville family’s boathouse, her eyes burning like red-hot coals. Oink! Oink! Aaaaargh!!!!!

Good news — for me anyway — is that the new, remade Amityville Horror (15, previewed at Dundee UGC) has dropped the hog from Hell from the character list. That apart, the story is pretty much as was.

It’s 1976, and the Lutz family — mum Kathy (Melissa George), stepdad George (Ryan Reynolds) and three kids — land their dream house, a rambling, detached Dutch colonial number on the banks of a lake in Amityville, Long Island. And they get it for a knockdown sum. How come? A couple of years before, a previous resident had shot dead his entire family there. Later, singing like a possessed canary to the cops, he claimed voices had ordered him to carry out the murders.

But back to the property market. The Lutzs know the house’s history, but it’s an offer they can’t refuse. However, they’ve no sooner moved in, than a whole host of haunted-house cliches come a-calling — locked doors fly open, rooms grow suddenly cold, fridge magnets rearrange themselves into diabolic messages, and daughter Chelsea (Chloe Moretz) starts wittering on about an imaginary friend called Jodie, another wee girl like herself, which the camera wastes no time in revealing as a ghost.

The family, although uneasy, try to take all this in their stride — until Chelsea starts walking about on the roof, a babysitter ends up a basketcase, and dad starts fiddling about with axes and shotguns.

A priest tries to assist, but after a mid-Exorcism encounter with a swarm of in-house bees, he holsters his Holy Water bottle, hitches up his cassock and scarpers. From this point, any hopes the Lutzs may have had of any major home improvements go out the window.

The Amityville Horror continues Hollywood’s current love affair with horror remakes, most evident in the churning out of retreads of Japanese ghost movies. And in a nod to Nippon, that’s probably why now Jodie is no longer a pig, but a dark-eyed, pale-faced girl with long black hair (a staple of many a Japanese horror movie — Ring, The Grudge, et al). But that’s no grumble, just an observation. As tales of terror go, this is quite a tingler.

VERDICT: Puts the mort and the 12 gauge into mortgage.

Three stars